BUILD_ME III - Working towards a climate-friendly building sector in the MENA region
About BUILD_ME
BUILD_ME aims to accelerate zero-emission building sector ambitions in across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The BUILD_ME project is financed by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and holds the official title: Accelerating 0-emission building sector ambitions in the MENA region project. The project lead partner is Guidehouse, Germany, Housing and Building National Research Center (HBRC) as the national partner and Integrated Development Group (IDG) as the national project manager in Egypt, Royal Scientific Society as the national partner in Jordan, Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC) as the national partner in Lebanon and the Intergovernmental Partner (RCREEE).
The building sector in the MENA region has great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by means of energy-efficient and climate-friendly construction.
The project supports pilot projects and policy dialogues which foster the partner countries’ ambitions to achieve climate-neutral building standards. BUILD_ME focuses on the introduction of an energy classification system for buildings, aimed at facilitating access to finance for buildings that meet sustainability criteria.
Phase One
The project began in 2016 and the first phase of project focused on understanding the market and the main barriers for the uptake of highly efficient buildings in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. The analysis showed that there are several challenges linked to enforcing and implementing energy efficiency building codes (EEBCs). The incomplete enforcement and implementation of EEBCs has resulted in the lack of energy benchmarks (missing baseline). This situation makes it difficult for financial institutes to assess whether a building is eligible for financing. Observations indicate that various financing institutions in the MENA region are aiming and willing to provide special financing for low energy buildings.
Phase Two
The second phase of BUILD_ME concentrated on providing solutions to close these gaps and improve the framework. This has included the developing different tools (benchmarking, building energy performance (BEP) calculation tool, demonstration project database) and enabling national trainers to use the tools and provide further trainings for local stakeholders.
Phase Three
The BUILD_ME third phase will focus on using the tools and frameworks developed to facilitate the financing of energy efficient building projects. Therefore, it will work on initiating collaboration with banks and funds with the aim to find solutions for them to provide financial support for energy efficient buildings by applying the building energy performance tool and national baselines from the building typologies.
Key facts